r as after all it was their music they were trying to protect. Many, however, refused wanting rather to “give power to the people”. One band though that did jump on the bandwagon was Metallica, suing for copyright infringement. Napster was ordered to try to ban all Metallica mp3’s from their servers and managed to survive this onslaught as well. Recently though Napster was taken to The Ninth Circuit Court and the result was not all good. In the words of Napster’s web site: “The court has issued an injunction directing Napster to block the sharing of specific music files after we receive appropriate notice from the copyright holders (in most cases, the record companies). We’ve already received some notices, and we expect the record companies to send more notices soon.’ You will still be able to share music that we haven't been asked to block but this may soon change.This entire Napster issue has generally been regarded as a group of freewheeling kids who never considered the legal implications of their software. This just isn’t the case as a lot of preparations were made right from the start to prevent a law suit. However the music industry has decided to hold this technology back which isn’t the smartest of things to do. Technology will always be improving and to hold it back is a vain quest. As the net’s speed and size increases technologies much like Napster could be used to trade everything from full-length movies to computer operating systems, anything that can take digital form. Its unfortunate that Napster and the ‘industry’ couldn’t try to work something out but this will eventually happen when not only mp3’s are shared but other forms of media as well. So in conclusion its in this writer’s opinion that its better to go with the flow then try to fight the inevitable. ...
